US President Donald Trump has said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has done a “very good job thus far” and that the pair have a “very good relationship”.
Asked by the BBC on board Air Force One about his relationship with Sir Keir, Trump added that they would be having a call “over the next 24 hours”.
Trump and the Labour leader have met on a number of occasions, including a visit by Sir Keir to Trump Tower in New York during the presidential campaign.
Tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, however, has been strongly critical of Sir Keir and has repeatedly called for his removal from office.
“I get along with him well. I like him a lot,” Trump said of Sir Keir.
"He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person and I think he’s done a very good job thus far.
"He’s represented his country in terms of philosophy.
“I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him.”
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[Foreign Secretary] Lammy has described his own criticism of the president, made when he was a backbencher, as “old news”.
In 2018 he described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” but the foreign secretary has since had dinner with him alongside the prime minister.
Nobody is saying that the US is afraid of us, that’s just a strawman.
What my comment was saying is that the US would rather have more access to UK markets than less, and if they feel giving empty platitudes makes that more likely, they’ll do it.
Any politician will put out a milquetoast praise of another leader (particularly if they’re an ally) if they think there’s even a slight chance it will benefit from it.
That’s why people praised Trump when he won. Very few leaders actually have any love for him.
I don’t think anyone in the Trump administrator is really a big thinker when it comes to international economics otherwise they wouldn’t be messing around with this utterly self-destructive tariff idea.
Republicans are morons but even they can grasp that countries buying from them is good for them.
He dropped the “let’s put heavy tariffs on China” after he won the election. It was nationalist grandstanding for his campaign that he has reversed course on now.